June 30, 2012

In the days before Lenny Bruce, no comedy act was harassed more often than Ray Bourbon. Consistently provocative and customarily raided, Bourbon's act skirted convention. Civic authorities unplugged his microphone in mid-performance and the venues he played were regularly threatened with padlocked consequence. When he wasn't sitting in the slammer for "lewd performance" or the now remarkable charge of "impersonating a woman," Bourbon was mailing letters of desperate agony to Variety. The June 3, 1970 edition featured a startling plea buried on page fifty-one, sandwiched between news of Jackie Mason's new production firm and a publicity photo of Homer and Jethro.

Brownwood, Tex. 76801Editor, Variety:

This is the town where they pulled Midnight Cowboy for being obscene. I am sure it must be obvious to you now what chance I had here for getting a fair trial. I'm hoping you will mention this as I seem to have been completely forgotten by everyone; especially ones I've done favors for. I'll be grateful for anything you can say to attract any kind of aid. I am now on an appeal. But I need help. The address of the jail where I'm in is 212 N. Broadway, Brownwood, Texas 76801.

One of my favorite things about the internet is that it encourages serious academic discussions about cats playing pianos. ROFLcon III happened in early May and I just got around to watching a good panel discussion on the Supercut - which is, put shortly, a comprehensive and thematic video montage. The coiner of the term, Andy Baio, and three notable supercutters go over their own work, themes of the supercut and the future of the supercut. Very nice! The video is in four parts, with examples taking up the first half-ish of things.

One point of contention from this supercut obsessed blogger - in part IV, the panel seems to agree that the supercut has run its course as an expressive medium. Disagree! Andy Baio's own Supersupercut is a fantastic example of the use of automation in supercuts. My Supercut-O-Matic software is another example of the power of automation to create thematic montages. Google is now able to crawl through videos and pick out clips of cats. Open source Music Information Retrieval frameworks like MARSYAS can automatically identify specific facets of songs. In the near future, computers will automatically find LOLLY content for us and compile it, putting even the aggregation website editors out of work. I do also think that interactivity will be introduced into supercuts, so that users can move freely through categorized media rather than watching a linear video clip. But hey, maybe I'm crazy.

Certainly the panel doesn't give a very good history of the supercut. The earliest historical example they give is Christian Marclay's "The Clock". If the panel weren't all male, perhaps they would've mentioned Dara Birnbaum's 1978 cut-up of Wonder Woman transforming. To venture a challenge to the internet, here's what I'm calling the earliest supercut - the amazing, brilliant 1965 collage "Argh!" by Folke Rabe and Jan Bark. Listen here and do tell me if you know an earlier example of this concept. I only recently found ARGH! and I'm completely transfixed by its prophetic beauty.

June 29, 2012

I see that a few people have aired this band on WFMU, but I'm absolutely miffed that no one has written about them! This record is one of my favorites, it is a steamrolling, unmitterated embodiment of pure happiness. The Joseph A. Ferko String Band (anchored to an annual Mummers parade in Philadelphia), has been active since 1922. In the 50s and 60s, they not only made the Billboard Charts, but outsold Fats Domino and Sammy Davis Jr. Dubbed "The Happiest Music in the World", the Ferko String Band (still active) has performed for The Jackie Gleason Show, in some movies, game shows, or national morning news programs over the years, and in the aforementioned LP recording (which I don't think I'd have the liberty to share), the unit is supposedly 100 men strong. Every song is in the same tempo (often faster than the videos featured here) and all of the happy-go-lucky lyrics are unrelentingly shouted for the duration of the record, in a bombastic fit of precise and disciplined racket. In my estimation this record is like the blind mob rule of absolute and unflinching joy, some kind of Mickey Mouse military rally against the hangover goblins. I will stop at the risk of being accused of hyperbole and let you listen for yourself, but I mean it! Don't be so glum!

I have to thank my buddy Travis Johnson for alerting me to this bit of incredibly surreal realness: extreme metal legends Napalm Death performing on a BBC musical program for children (apparently called What's That Noise?). I really have nothing more to add to that. Just, wow. Perhaps most amusing of all is the band's decision to play their infamous second-long masterpiece "You Suffer" from their classic debut Scum. Or just the fact that's near impossible to get extreme music on ANY television show, let alone a children's program.

June 27, 2012

Your Miner has just moused in from the coast and boy is his index finger tired. A neat bit of international blogtrotting this week has culminated in a gorgeous mosaic of OOP records both far and flung. Most thrilling of all is the latest master post from Likembe maestro John B. who has added to his rich archive of Biafran offerings. (See the lead item, below.) Music loving doesn't get any better than this. Enjoy!

Land of the Rising Sun"Birth of a Nation is propaganda, and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense. It was issued by the Biafran government in an effort to influence public opinion in the outside world, especially the United Kingdom, main supporter of the Federal Government in Lagos against the secessionists. In 1968, when it was released, the Biafran cause had already for all intents and purposes been lost, although this wouldn't be apparent for some time. Still, it's of considerable interest not only to historians but musically, as it contains some nice highlife tunes. Listened to in sequence the album sounds like something recorded off a shortwave radio broadcast in the wee hours of the morning, history in the making. (Description by John B)

Decades ago, before the era of huge radio conglamerates and when many DJs actually had the freedom to pick personally the tunes heard on their shows, a fair number of singers decided to record songs about DJs themselves, no doubt in the hopes of increasing their record's appeal to the various gatekeepers behind the microphones.

June 26, 2012

Jliat, the preferred nom de plume (purportedly came to him in a dream) of conceptual artist James Whitehead, is one that makes many people in the noise scene cringe with anger (especially what he calls "rebellious Americans") because of his vehement stance on the concept of anti music. Not only is he a person who has released CDs that exhibit the various different "kinds" of silence, CDs that are not only silent but will make speakers smoke if turned to high volume, classical music midi files repurposed with war sounds, a DVDr boxset of 233 discs containing in total 711 days of audio, an automated program that mimicked the effects chain that Merzbow had at the time of its creation, set to generate (and upload) 4 minutes of random noise every day without human intervention, and so forth.

He has also angered many a noise label for his opinions that devalue the concept of an artist/truth seeker/genius of present day with the resolution that we are in a post modern cesspool. To jliat, we are left with only a few outmoded post ironic creative devices set to a devalued instinct towards limp mnemonic conceptual repetition.

Paradoxically, he has been a consistent reviewer for the venerable publication Vital Weekly over the course of several years, and a shit disturber in a couple of chat forums about noise for a good while too. His reviews seem to come with the resolution that all recorded noise is basically the same (as something that communicates nothing), or it is thinly veiled music, neither of which merit a consistent level of literary acknowledgement/observation.

Instead, jliat, undoubtedly a sophisticated and well-educated man, who as a student at Falmouth School of Art crossed paths with AMM, John Cage, John Tilbury, Harrison Birtwistle, The Music Improvisation Company, and various progenitors of fluxus, electronic and tape machine workshops, etcetra etcetra, will use the admittedly open ended and unassuming medium of noise reviews to wax poetic, expounding upon various realms of art history or just seemingly belching out polysyllabic free association verbage, rather than even attempting to paint an adequate picture of what the listener might expect if she were to purchase the release in question.

With the assistance of Mr. Whitehead, and since Vital Weekly is a publication that encourages the free distribution of its contents, I present to you all or at least a great many of the reviews Jliat has done over the course of several years, in all of its dizzying and convivial, unrepentantly counter-intuitive glory (after the jump).

June 25, 2012

I can convince almost anyone to come see almost any shitty band, but in years of attending drag events I have only ever been able to convince one straight male to attend with me—and I think it was the free vodka that convinced him. I catch some flack for being a straight dude that is a fan of drag culture, reluctantly and loosely identifying as a post-hetero-retro-sexual (if you need a label).

But it’s easy to explain my enthusiasm for the performance stylings of men in dresses. These artists are not just manipulating paints and brushes. They are manipulating their bodies to create illusions and performances that will stay with their audiences long after they wash off their make-up and take off their heels. More than that, drag is one form of performance art that still has the ability to freak out the most conservative of squares, but also make many members of supposedly “progressive” art communities think twice before attending. And for those that question drag as an artform: they give Oscars for make-up and costume design, and as a whole these queens have a much quicker wit than any of the masses in improv classes. Plus, these gals put it all together and then dance in heels with their dicks tucked up between their legs. Now that shit, I’m guessing, takes some practice.

Taking it a step further is Sharon Needles of Pittsburgh’s Haus of Haunt, who lives by the mantra “when in doubt, freak ‘em out.” Sharon is challenging long-held standards of beauty not only in the drag community but in the world at large. I got to sit down with Ms. Needles at Barefoot’s Pride Week launch party last week, where she affirmed her role as America’s Next Drag Superstar. This night, while other queens imitated Aretha and Cher, Ms. Needles gave us a Peggy Bundy that channeled the Cramps’ Poison Ivy. This isn’t just a lip-sync or a dance performance; this is commentary.

We could talk at length about Needles choosing to impersonate the lazy, channel-surfing, bonbon-stuffing icon, but it’s the little things that make me love Sharon. Instead of flipping though a TV Guide on stage, she is flipping though the latest issue of Time Out New York as she clicks the remote at the audience. Sharon isn’t bored with what is on TV. She is bored with pop culture as a whole and is looking for something more. “There is no reason not to know what is going on in the underground. You don’t have to listen to fucking Madonna or Lady Gaga… I grew up in my record store. I grew up in my video store. Today, with the Internet, people have no excuse not to be informed of other options.”

June 24, 2012

Today, three tapes which I've been saving for awhile, for just the right time. Now, instead of making each into a post of it's own, I've decided to bundle them together, into an "odds and ends" post.

First up, a very brief tape featuring someone named Oliver, a radio newsman who has been asked (in 1975) to provide a few seconds worth of introduction to a special program on Foreign Policy. He does so, giving seven nearly identical readings in about 90 seconds. What makes this tape memorable is the obnoxious version of the text he shares with his recipients after the seven intros, in giving an eighth intro, in an altered fashion. While I hope this sort of thing no longer goes on, I suspect it probably does.

Next up, an equally obnoxious tape. I knew I was in for an interesting listen when I opened this box and saw that the inside cover was labeled "Phallus in Wonderland". The resulting tape did not disappoint, although my enjoyment of it was mostly in the wonder of listening to two people who clearly thought they were being much funnier than was actually the case, rather than any humor or titillation I got out of it. For about 16 minutes, Jerry and an unnamed woman take a trip through a few different children's stories, replacing key words here and there or accenting certain syllables. If you're in the right mood, you may find it either fascinating or mind numbing, or maybe even both.

Finally, and on a truly different note, there is a recording of an amazing televised Civil Rights Discussion, probably from a public television station, from a some time in 1968. The last half hour of what was an hour long show is recorded here.

I'm calling it a discussion, although for significant stretches of it, it's really more of a barely-under-control argument, to the point that at times, the microphones in one of the two studios being used are cut so that the other parties can respond without being interrupted (although you can still hear the "cut" participants continuing to talk). I think I've identified one participant as Maryland Representative Charles Mathias, and wonder if "Mr. Kilpatrick" is one-time segregationist James J. Kilpatrick. I also think one of the speakers may be Hosea Williams, who was part of Dr. King's inner circle. As to the others, I think there are mentions the names Mr. Field, Mr. Palmer and Mr. McKissick, but beyond hearing those names, I have been unable to identify these other speakers.

At the end of the show there is over nearly 90 seconds of muffled conversation, followed by some ending voice-over comments, and I couldn't help but laugh at the song which started the commercial for an upcoming show, a song whose lyrics did not really fit with what had just gone down. I've left in a moment of that song for your enjoyment.

June 23, 2012

According to Hesiod, Dreams are the children of Night, and brothers and sisters of Death and Sleep. Like these they are represented in the Odyssey as dwelling in the far West, near Oceanus, in the neighborhood of the sunset and the kingdom of the dead. Deceptive dreams issue from a gate of ivory, true dreams through a gate of horn.

"The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls. Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.

Second soul, and the second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right button.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out ... depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.

Years ago, while I was still stuck in that “why can't I just fall down a flight of stairs” phase of high school which most of us seem to go through, I put on Joy Division while driving with my brother. After a few minutes of music, he said something along the lines of “What the fuck is this? This guy sounds like he wants to kill himself.” To which I replied “Well, funny story."

In reality, of course, the 1980 suicide of 23-year-old Ian Curtis, vocalist and occasional guitarist of Joy Division, is not a funny story at all. It's actually a really fucking sad story, one that revolves around Curtis's epilepsy, a love triangle between his wife, Deborah, and Annik Honoré, a Belgian reporter, and the pressures of being in a popular band. Worse, Curtis's often intensely autobiographic lyrics tend to plot out the depths and causes of his depression. “Existence, well what does it matter/I exist on the best terms I can,” he moans in “Heart and Soul,”while “Isolation” has him pleading “Mother I tired please believe me/I'm doing the best that I can.”

Even “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” a track which featured a music video and peaked at number 13 on the

June 22, 2012

I've been on a rather consistent Scissor Girls kick this past week, especially when it comes to continually penetrating the late, great Chicago no-wave/noise-rock trio's disjointed, schizo, brilliant 10" so that you can start to see what S-T-A-T-I-C-L-A-N-D (with recording help from one Tom Smith of To Live And Shave In L.A. fame, who's fingerprints seem to linger over the record's fractured aesthetic). There sadly are too few bands these days with both the sonic and visual audacity that the Girls possessed; here are some moving picture diversions from the band's archives:

Cryptic, amusing interviews and some short, but solid live footage from Chicago TV show Ben Loves Chicago:

June 20, 2012

Trumping any WFMU DJs who ever felt winded after the old 4 hour long 2-6am overnight slot, WFMU's beloved People Like Us is too good at programming insanely long radio shows. She's got a 24/7 Do or DIY stream on WFMU and put together a 744 hour long broadcast for the UK's AV Festival called Radio Boredcast. Which is where I pass the mic to PLU...

Given that Radio Boredcast is a 744-hour online radio project, we consider today, The Longest Day, a most appropriate time to make this announcement. Curated by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) with AV Festival, Radio Boredcast responds to our ambiguous relationship with time - do we have too much or not enough? - celebrating the detail, complexity and depth of experience lost through our obsession with speed. BASIC.fm first hosted the project through the duration of AV Festival (1-31 March 2012) and now this unique and colossal archive is accessible for Listen on Demand at WFMU.

An impressive list of participants (including WFMU DJs) were invited to create new radio shows, audio works and mixes in response to the AV Festival theme "As Slow As Possible" and thematic playlists and contextual programming surround these creations.

In addition to writing this weekly Motherlode and hosting a twice weekly radio show, I also manage a 24-hour online radio/stream hybrid hosted by WFMU. Called Give the Drummer Radio, the stream started two years ago as a scheme to able to continue broadcasting my long-running WFMU program after I moved away from NYC to Pittsburgh. Once I established that I could air my own show live on the stream, I began inviting other DJs and music obsessives to present their programs on the stream as well. Give the Drummer Radio now boasts seven different programs and more are on the way.

When human-powered programming isn't airing on the stream, its default mode is to play a continuously expanding library of adventurous recordings from all genres, regions, eras and contexts. To hear Give the Drummer Radio at any time, click here. To see the schedule of program airing on the stream, click here.

I maintain an mailing list for the stream. Recipients receive email alerts when programs are going live, as well as a weekly newsletter that includes programming info and links to blogs with great downloads that are not published in Mining the Audio Motherlode. If you'd like to get on the mailing list, send a request. Additionally, you can like the stream on Facebook and follow it on Twitter.

Bavarian Bop"The record that was issued in 1972 as a collaborative work between famous drama collective Tenjo Sajiki leaded by Shuji Terayama and group Singers Three. All lyrics were written by Terayama and music was written by Makoto Wada - an artist (worked with Tadanori Yokoo), composer, director and experimentator. Actually the disk material were compositions for two Terayama's and Wada's drama performances: for the first, The Crime of Debuko Oyama (yet from 1967-68), for the second - Shadow Thief on famous comics motives. It belongs to rock music very indirectly - mostly it is a mix of a few old styles: European cabaret with a tart taste of decadence, pre-war jazz in Louis Armstrong vein, bright country with a merry banjo and Japanese theater." (Description [translated from Russian] by Day D)

June 19, 2012

Comics are the greatest story-telling medium ever, combining words and art to build a narrative. But minicomics are like haiku: They set a mood, make a point, surprise the reader— communicate—in a spare, evocative way. Being small makes them seem more intimate; the fact that they are often produced by hand by the artist/writer makes them very personal. Minicomics may be twee, but they are rarely pretentious.

I have a small (obviously) collection, tiny booklets I’ve picked up here and there. One of my favorites is “Things I Saw and Did, Pt. 1” by dom the deer, who made a little pamphlet of her 2010 vacation in Paris and London, not because she had some heavy realization to impart but just because she had an impulse to share the fun. It’s very sweet.

Meanwhile, in Europe, where comix art is more generally appreciated, the folks at B.ü.L.B. in Geneva had the idea of issuing minis in box sets. They’ve been publishing sequential art since 1997, and apparently making a living at it—something that is unlikely ever to happen here in the US. I assumed their government was supporting them, because that’s the sort of thing governments do over there, but they claim to be unsubsidized, and their “manifesto” gives a shout-out to the D.I.Y. ethos of mid-80s hardcore, especially straightedge. (I’m reading a Google translation from French, though, so who knows?) In the past, I’ve picked up a couple of B.ü.L.B boxes at MoCCA and enjoyed them very much.

Each boxed set has five 1¼” x 2¾” 22-page accordions “bound” with a rubber band, each by a different artist, some well-known here (Chris Ware, Jad Fair, Ivan Brunetti), others not so much. Recently, B.ü.L.B sent me a copy of Box 2W Set Y (Charles Burns, etc.), which is how I discovered the work of the Swiss/German collaborative duo It’s Raining Elephants. Their mini, “Sunrise,” was my favorite of the set.

Thanks to the Interwebs, you can find and buy minicomics without having to hang around the fringes of some distressing comic convention. If you want to buy American mass-market comics, though—well, actually, why would you want to? I’ve found that most people have a dim idea that there’s still a spinner rack full of Richie-Rich and Superman and Caspar and Fantastic Four … somewhere … maybe at the grocery store? Isn’t that where they used to have them? If the latest news coverage of a superhero who’s “died” or come out as gay or whatever does cause you to want to go buy a comic, you pretty much have to call a special phone number to locate a comic-book retailer, and then drive to a special store in a sad little strip mall, and then deal with the pimply-faced 17-year-old loser who, no matter how many Eisner awards you have, will call you “Ma’am” as if it were an insult. Well, maybe not that last part, that might just be me, but the rest of it, absolutely. And then, when you actually find a comic book, you see: Rob Liefeld.

Bill Hanstock and Brandon Stroud have written a couple of brilliant articles reviewing the worst of Rob Liefeld’s "art," which must have been extremely difficult since it’s all so horrendous, plus they actually had to look at so much of it that it’s a wonder they haven’t both gone blind in self-defense. Here’s Part I, and here’s Part II. In Part II they say, “In the years between 1986 and 2011, not once did an editor crack open a FedEx package containing Liefeld's art, slide out the inked pages, and say, "What the shit am I looking at?" For 25 years, just "Beautiful! Send this to the letterer! Wouldn't change a thing!" So I guess what I'm saying is ... maybe Rob Liefeld isn't history's greatest monster?”

That is correct. Yes, that’s exactly what happens. Mainstream comic book editors are wonderful examples of what Erroll Morris refers to as the Anosognosic’s Dilemma: They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know that they don’t know anything about art, because they don’t know that there’s anything to know. Same with writing. Same with editing. Same with any kind of business management. To know these things is not a requirement for the job. What comic book editors know is, for example, who inked issue 28 of Secret Origins in 1988.

June 18, 2012

Let me count the ways I love Drew McDowall, half of Compound Eye (with Psychic Ill Tres Warren), member of CSD with Kara Bohnenstiel, and recent collaborator with Emeralds' John Elliott in Outer Space. All cool and great things, sure, but I first heard about Mr. McDowall from his days as a member of Coil. Hell, he played on perhaps my favorite record of all time, Astral Disaster. He's playing on Wednesday at Death By Audio at the Modular Solstice show*, I would totally go to that if I didn't live 1305 miles away.

What was the first truly strange record you ever heard?Apart from the countless strange children's records with forgotten names and multicolour vinyl, the first record that I remember thinking "what is this? I really don't understand this" was The Faust Tapes. I was 12 when it came out and I bought it because it was cheap (49 pence) and because I liked the cover art. I can't say that I liked it initially but I was obsessed by it, playing it endlessly, trying to understand it, trying to figure out why some one would do such a thing. A couple of years later it would become a litmus test that I used frequently: I would ask people what the thought of it (it seemed like everyone had bought it) and try and come to some conclusion about them from their answer. Most of them hated it.

A couple of questions about your time in Coil. You were on my personal favorite - Astral Disaster. Anything you can share about the making of that record, an interesting anecdote?That record was the culmination of auspicious currents. We recorded on Samhain in Southwark the oldest part of the city. London is a living being (that is not a metaphor) and we were on the bank of the Thames below the level of the river, under the her main aquatic artery. The record is a distillation of all those influences. Unusually for Coil it was recorded quickly and more or less live.

For all the reasons to love Opera IX, it's really the keyboard sounds that pushes Fronds of the Ancient Walnut into !!!!! territory for me. I love how progressively Opera IX moves from blast beats and shrieks to operatic moaning over midtempo beatdowns. Certainly there's a lot of gothic posturing, pagan imagery and classical influx at play. But it's those fuckin keyboard sounds that sound like the "boss theme" from some RPG, mixed with the guitarist shredding in a completely different key...can't beat it. Makes me want to listen to some Enslaved By Owls, who more than anybody else know how to use ominous, outsider keyboards to make heavy and evil music without even needing a distortion pedal.

As a bonus, I've also got a free download of Opera IX's first official release, 1993's 7" consisting of Born In The Grave / The Red Death. No keyboards on this one, but hey, still some great, strange blackened sounds for ya.

June 15, 2012

"Yo Little Brother", according to the youtube comments, is a video where the at times psychotic looking narrator, Nolan Thomas, is following his wee leather clad brother around trying to protect him from the evils of drugs. As they parade through the dark alleys of some pastel colored cardboard urban landscape, he finds that the impressionable little one is not being led astray in the concrete jungle, but instead, breakdancing with a group of kids that dress up as Cyndi Lauper, Prince, and the Boss, upholding music as a preferrable high. While the wikipedia entry says different, it appears that Nolan Thomas (Marko Kalfka was his real name) was prototypical of Milli Vanilli, lip syching to the voice of Elán Lanier on this track, while he sang on all of the others.

June 14, 2012

The Gate, at first glance, are an improvisational / jazz trio, but with information freely flowing in from punk and metal (Brian Osborne drummed with Wretched Worst for their very memorable Castle session last March; bassist Tom Blancarte, also a black metal fan) and horror films (tuba player Dan Peck, in addition to being a fan of black metal et al., is also a horror and cult-film buff), their sound offers doomy vistas, and cinematic, creeped-out passages, as well as hearty improv energy.

This live set runs the gamut of rhythmic / tonal delights, and the listener likewise easily escapes any preconceptions about what a tuba, bass and drum trio might be able to pull off. "Plague Face" will bring to mind Alan Silva and BYG Actuel, as often as it does European B-film music. At just over 47 minutes, this set is a real treat for fans of the "out." Mp3 hotspot > 18 mins.